The federal government should also fund after-school and summer jobs programs, Emanuel said.

The federal government should invest "in neighborhoods that are hard hit by poverty and become a breeding ground for violence," Emanuel said.

A spokesman for Emanuel declined to comment further, referring reporters to the WTTW interview.

Chicago Police Department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the department "is more than willing to work with the federal government to build on our partnerships with the [U.S. Justice Department] FBI, [Drug Enforcement Agency,] and [the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] and boost federal prosecution rates for gun crimes in Chicago."

Just before Trump tweeted, Horace Cooper of the National Center for Public Policy Research was being interviewed by Bill O'Reilly on Fox News, and he said federal officials should be tasked with stopping the violence.

Cooper said there had been a "wholesale failure" by Emanuel and other Illinois officials to stop the "carnage," perhaps indicating why Trump put quotation marks around that word in his tweet.

The statistics used in Trump's tweet are the same as those in an on-screen graphic used by Fox.

On Monday, Emanuel urged Trump to stop debating the size of the crowd at his inauguration and focus on issues that matter.

Hours after Trump took office, the White House website was changed to include a pledge to "stand up for the law enforcement community." Chicago was singled out for censure.

“There were thousands of shootings in Chicago last year alone,” the website reads.

Throughout Trump's presidentila campaign, Chicago was held up as the embodiment of all that is wrong with urban America — a "war-torn country" rife with voter fraud and consumed with violence and poverty.

"It is terrible there," Trump said in the first presidential debate, and he called for the return of stop-and-frisk, which had been ruled unconstitutional.